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Ontario government to clamp down on vaping and medical marijuana

The Ontario government is vaporizing the use of medical marijuana in public places, the Star has learned.

In a major policy U-turn, Queen’s Park will ban the smoking and vaping of medicinal pot in all enclosed public places, workplaces, and many outdoor areas as well as curb the use and sale of e-cigarettes. (Dreamstime)

The Ontario government is vaporizing the use of medical marijuana in public places, the Star has learned.

In a major policy U-turn, Queen’s Park will ban the smoking and vaping of medicinal pot in all enclosed public places, workplaces, and many outdoor areas as well as curb the use and sale of e-cigarettes.

Associate health minister Dipika Damerla is expected to outline the changes on Thursday.

Sources said the potentially controversial anti-toking and anti-vaping measures were approved by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet on Wednesday afternoon.

The moves are “to strengthen . . . smoking laws to better protect people from second-smoke, whether from a tobacco product or medical marijuana,” an official said.

While a ban on selling e-cigarettes to anyone under the age of 19 took effect on Jan. 1, the regulations limiting where adults could vape were in limbo.

That’s because the government had to go back to the drawing board after new rules came out last November that would have allowed people to smoke or vape medical marijuana in any public place where smoking is otherwise prohibited.

The original exemptions included restaurants, offices, movie theatres, stadiums, and even children’s playgrounds.

That led to accusations the government had made a hash of things, which forced Damerla to take a second look.

“We will consider this feedback, look at it very carefully and see what we need to do,” the minister said last fall. “It’s too early to say whether this was a failure or not. It’s important that governments be responsive.”

Business owners were unhappy at the possibility of having to tell people to butt out their medication in order appease other customers concerned about second-hand smoke or vapour.

Restaurants Canada had implored the government to rethink the policy instead of putting restaurateurs on the spot.

Medical marijuana users can include HIV, cancer, and glaucoma patients and those with severe epilepsy who require it to control seizures.

There are about 23,000 Canadians who have prescriptions from their doctors to take cannabis in various forms. For the most part their medicinal marijuana comes from producers licensed and inspected by Health Canada.

Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana, which represents the patients, had hailed Damerla’s initial opening up of the policy as an “important milestone in the recognition of the legitimacy of the use of cannabis as a medicine.”

“Ontario has taken a huge step forward,” executive director Jonathan Zaid said in a statement Nov. 25.

But the Canadian Cancer Society, which is supporting Damerla’s tightening of the legislation, maintains second-hand marijuana smoke may cause similar health problems as being exposed to tobacco smoke.

Rowena Pinto, the organization’s Ontario vice president of public affairs, noted “e-cigarettes have not been thoroughly tested” and more study is needed to determine the long-terms effects.

With medical marijuana now widely accepted — and the federal Liberal government studying how to legalize cannabis for recreational use — the new vaping restrictions may be actually more contentious for Wynne’s Liberals.

That’s because the revised rules will treat e-cigarettes exactly like tobacco, prohibiting their use in cars and trucks when driving with children under 16.

Vaping will also be banned in restaurant and bar patios, schoolyards, playgrounds, condominium common areas, stadiums, and hospital grounds.

Under Damerla’s amendments, the government “will expand the list of places where e-cigarettes are prohibited for sale” to include university and college campuses and “establish rules for the display and promotion of e-cigarettes in places where they are sold and prohibit the testing of e-cigarettes where they are sold.”

Progressive Conservative MPP Randy Hillier, vapers’ leading crusader at Queen’s Park because he maintains e-cigarettes help smokers wean off of more harmful tobacco, has stressed “harm reduction ought to be our goal.”

“The most effective technology so far developed to help people kick their smoking addiction is the vaporizer,” Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington) noted at legislative hearings last year.

“We are going to condemn tens of thousands of people to stay addicted to tobacco on false, moralistic grounds that have no science or evidence to back it up,” he said.

Hillier was the lone dissenter in a 100-1 vote in the legislature last year on the Making Healthier Choices Act that banned flavoured tobacco and limited e-cigarettes.

There is a groundswell of grass-roots support for vaping in Ontario — last December hundreds of protesters gathered at Queen’s Park to oppose the clampdown.

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